Tuesday was an absolute mess. I was hit by a monsterous Deracho (a fast-moving severe thunderstorm with high winds) that became one of the most destructive events my area has ever seen, right up there with Hurricanes Irene and Sandy. The storm was moving at 110 mph with Category 1 hurricane-equivalent wind gusts, hail as big as baseballs, frequent cloud-to-ground lightning, and sustained winds high enough to uproot trees. It was surprisingly quick, lasting less than half an hour, but was incredibly destructive. Most of my town (me included) lost power, trees were down everywhere, most roads were blocked by debris and power lines, two nearby towns were declared disaster zones, and one person was killed in my town. I later found out that the reason for all that damage in my town and in the nearest 10 miles was due to a huge macroburst that formed nearby, creating winds of 110 mph - as strong as a high-end Category 2 hurricane. Along with that macroburst, there were AT LEAST seven tornadoes, two waterspouts, two microbursts, and one other macroburst that formed from this Deracho. School was canceled for the rest of the week, and while we’re likely to have it tomorrow, the town is still not completely fixed up. Some roads are still impassible, and a good portion of the population does not have electricity yet. Some may not get it back for a few more days.
My experience with this storm was...not fun. I was already quite nervous about it beforehand, and when that giant shelf cloud hit and everything went berserk, I was honestly freaking out. The power went out almost immediately and we had to go into the basement. However, after the initial strike (which lasted for 5-10 minutes), everything began to slowly calm down. There were very little lightning flashes and it wasn’t apocalypse ink black outside. Eventually, under half an hour after the storm hit, it was safe enough to return upstairs. When I went outside to check everything, I found that a ten foot long tree branch had hit the side of my house and took off my gutter. If it was any bigger it would’ve gone straight through my room. For the next few hours, the only sounds besides the eerie silence were rainfall, occasional fumbles of thunder, and the sirens of emergency vehicles.
That first day, I spent quite a lot of time building some LEGOs I got for my birthday (don’t judge) and reading. About a day after the storm, we got our power back, so I spent the next two days finding planets in K2 Campaign 15. Friday was a very successful day - I found nearly three dozen new planet candidates! Now I have to complete the homework I forgot about and is now due tomorrow. Darn.

My past two days were rather unusual. On Thursday in Chemistry we had a lab where we had to set Cheetos on fire below a can of water to measure how much energy was released. During that we almost set the school on fire (not my fault) and violated the law of Conservation of Mass (also not my fault). Long story short: don’t give our group matches.
Yesterday I finally went back to planet hunting and started to go through K2 Campaign 15. To my pleasant surprise, C15 lasted longer than any other K2 campaign - 86 days compared to the usual 78. This means I will have more data for weaker transiting planet signals and increases the likelihood of finding longer-period planets (30-80 days). However, because each data file for Campaign 15 stars are longer, they are also larger and means it takes longer for the program LcSignalFinder to do its job. I had to break up the LSF search of the first batch of C15 stars over two days, but already I’ve managed to find a few possible candidates and a likely Hot Neptune.

This Mars-copter is going alongside the enormous Mars 2020 rover, so there’s a strict size limit for any extra cargo. Plus, the lighter the better. Less weight means the rover and Mars-copter rocket will be more efficient.

I'm sorry that I'm incredibly late for releasing all the new discoveries over the last several months, and I'll try to get to them in the next few days.
Meanwhile, I have tracked down the first ever planet I found: EPIC 201274010.01, a Hot Mini-Neptune orbiting every 13.005090 days at 0.105805 AU with a radius 2.71 times that of Earth and an equilibrium temperature of about 742 K (876 F). The page for it on Exoplanet Explorers can be found HERE.

For weeks, I’ve been complaing that it’s too cold. Now I’m complaining about it being too hot. And by “too hot” I mean over 85 degrees Fahrenheit for the last two days. Right now it’s 89 F out and likely to reach or slightly exceed 91 F.

Okay, apparently today is now National Hot Jupiter Day, because there have been FIVE studies characterizing various planets of this category.
All jokes aside, four of today’s papers dealt with a new category of planet: Ultra Hot Jupiters or Extremely Irradiated Hot Jupiters. These are the absolute hottest gas giants in existence, with dayside temperatures in excess of 2,000 K. Some of the most notable examples include WASP-12b, WASP-33b, and Kelt-9b. The four papers studied HAT-P-7b, WASP-121b, and WASP-103b. One of the studies was about atmospheric characteristics of UHJs.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.00424
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.00096
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.00038
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.00029

There is a LOT we don’t know about Kepler-62f: it’s mass, atmosphere, greenhouse effect, surface gravity, etc. Depending on the planet’s atmosphere it could be significantly warmed up to 270-290 K, similar to Earth’s average temperature. However, it could also have a thin atmosphere (not very likely though) that traps in very little heat, causing the planet to freeze. It’s also unknown whether Kepler-62f has any land masses, or if it’s entirely covered in water like TRAPPIST-1d. If the planet has a significant greenhouse effect (similar to Earth’s or somewhat stronger) and solid land masses, life could develop similar to that on Earth, but at a generally slower rate. Given the system’s age of about 7 billion years, any life that started on Kepler-62f has likely reached a complex multicellular stage. It probably has a rather stable climate, as one study found that its axial tilt likely tips over at no more than 30*, and another found that Kepler-62f likely suffered a moon-forming impact in its past.

TRAPPIST-1e continues to get more and more Earth-like the more it’s studied. A new scientific paper was just released on arXiv, further detailing the planet’s composition. It has a large iron core containing about 42% of its mass with a 99.96% confidence. For comparison, Earth’s iron core takes up about a third of its mass.